Honorary Perks
by SamCyberCat
Summary: Wren and Socket have been given the tedious task of having to babysit the honorary Black Raven member, Tony.


Notes – Written for a kinkmeme prompt that wanted anything about the Black Ravens. Set post-PL4 with heavy spoilers for the game.

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><p>"And this is the super secret tunnel that leads down to where we do all of our black market dealings."<p>

"No it isn't, Socket!"

"Yes it is, Wren! What else could it possibly be if it's not a tunnel?"

"Well, it is a tunnel that leads to our base, sure, but now that you've told Tony about it we can hardly call it a secret anymore."

"Tony's an honorary member now, so it's okay. Besides, it's still a secret from most of Misthallery anyway."

"Except for all of us, our customers, Professor Layton, Luke, Miss Altava-"

"Guys, its okay," Tony cut in, before the siblings could argue any further, "I just want to see more of your Black Raven stuff."

The two of them exchanged uncertain glances.

"Um," Wren started, "I'm not sure you should go down their exactly. I mean, we can show you all the other cool Black Raven places around the market, but down there is sort of… eh… like our inner sanctum. Only fully qualified members and customers get to go down there."

"Oh, if you say so…" Tony mumbled, shuffling where he stood, "I guess we can just go look at something else."

"Yeah, that'd be best. You're really going to be impressed by Badger's lookout post," Socket promised, slapping Tony on the back reassuringly.

This seemed to do the trick, with Tony nodding and urging them on ahead. As they walked, Wren and Socket ended up exchanging slightly nervous glances again.

Tony was an honorary member of the Black Raven gang. This was a title that Crow had bestowed on him for all his help back when that mysterious Descole guy had attacked their town. Which was all fair enough – so long as you didn't forget what the term "honorary member" actually meant. It meant that you weren't really a member, it's just a title given out as a reward for doing something helpful for a group. The group in question would respect that the person is, by title, one of them, but in practise that person wasn't expected to actually stick around for longer than a few days.

The latter was the part that Tony had trouble grasping.

He seemed to believe that being an honorary member meant that he was on the way to becoming a full member someday. And… well, he was a nice kid and they didn't have any objections to him hanging around with them, but he wasn't really… how could they put it? He wasn't Black Raven material, to be frank.

All the same, he kept turning up at the market to hang around with them almost every day. Leading Crow, who probably hadn't thought this honorary member thing through far enough when he'd made Tony one, to frequently palm him off on other members to babysit for the day while the rest of them got on with the actual work.

Today was the turn of Wren and Socket, who were running out of things to show him.

"That's the post up there," Socket announced, gesturing to a wooden structure above them, "Badger uses it so that he can look out onto the market and see if there's any strangers coming. Then he can warn Scraps to stop looking through the piles of rubbish or else tell the rest of us to get ready for a customer."

"Cool!" Tony exclaimed, staring up at it with wide eyes.

"Why don't you come down and tell Tony a bit about what you do?" Socket called up, having just seen the top of Badger's head peer down at them.

"Um, I'm very busy right now," Badger lied, "Got a lot of… looking out to do. Wouldn't want someone to steal a good bit of loot from Scraps because I had my back turned."

More likely, he didn't want to have to explain his role to Tony for the millionth time.

"When I become a proper Black Raven maybe I can go on look out just like you do," Tony shouted up to him.

"Yeah, sure, keep practising," Badger replied, as the other two led Tony away.

Anyone else might have been able to see that none of the group was very forthcoming with information about how exactly they could become a proper member, but if Tony was anything it was devoted – he had spent over a year acting as a vengeful bodyguard for his older sister Arianna before everything had been sorted out, after all.

Besides, the kid was so nice that the rest of them just couldn't bring themselves to break his little heart by telling him no. Even Crow found it hard to disappoint him, hence why he let everyone else deal with Tony so that he didn't have to face him himself. There was still work to be done, after all, and Crow was very business-minded.

"I really think that we've shown him everything that there is to see," Wren whispered to Socket, as Tony skipped ahead.

"We showed him our place?"

"That was the first thing we did with him."

"Marilyn's fruit stall?"

"Nabby did that the other day."

"Um, Aunt Taffy's sweet stall?"

"Please, that's hardly part of our business. Besides, I'm definitely sure he's been there before."

"Did you say something about Aunt Taffy's?" Tony asked, having stopped to stare back at them.

"We… we were thinking about going there," Wren replied.

"But we can't get any sweets because we don't have the money for it," Socket added. Crow was always very sensible with rationing the money, sadly. He didn't mention that also their mother tended not to allow them to have extra sweets between meals.

"Is that all?" Tony laughed, "I can get you guys sweets, if you want."

"You can?" Socket gaped.

"Of course. We have lots of money and I usually buy all the sweets to share with Arianna anyway," Tony informed them.

They knew that part was true, at least. On more than one occasion the group had gone to buy sweets from Aunt Taffy only to find that a mysterious boy had dropped by earlier and cleaned out the whole stall before they could even get a look at it.

"We couldn't ask you to do that," Wren said, much to the clear disappointment of Socket, "That would be selfish."

"But you're my friends and I'm a future Black Raven," Tony insisted, "I want to get sweets to share with you guys."

"If you put it like that…"

"Do you guys like sherbet lemons? Those are one of my favourites. We can get lots of them if you want," Tony went on, tugging on both of their sleeves.

"I don't think it would hurt to have a few sweets," Socket said, allowing Tony to tug him forwards, "We have earned them. Um, do you think we should tell Crow about this?"

Wren looked thoughtful for a while, and then answered, "No, I reckon he's too busy right now to take a break for sweets."

After all, if Crow was going to dump the hard work on them then it was only fair that they should reap the rewards.

"Come on, guys!" Tony said, letting go of their arms to dash ahead.

"Coming!" They both called. For once, the siblings were in agreement about something.

Perhaps having an honorary member sticking around wouldn't be that bad after all.


End file.
